PowerColor Radeon RX 5600 XT Red Dragon Review

Name: PowerColor Radeon RX 5600 XT Red Dragon
Brand: PowerColor
Price: 300 USD

W1zzard

on May 13th, 2020,

in Graphics Cards.

Manufacturer: PowerColor

(7 Comments) »

Introduction

We have with us for review the PowerColor Radeon RX 5600 XT Red Dragon graphics card, positioned just a notch below the RX 5600 XT Red Devil. The Red Dragon brand represents high value as it's still a factory-overclocked product with such goodies as a quiet cooling solution with idle fan-stop, but a more compact dual-fan cooling solution, and dual-BIOS. The PowerColor Red Dragon also features a minimalist industrial design that looks great with its solid matte black surfaces and chrome rings around the fan intakes.

AMD created the Radeon RX 5600 XT to stamp leadership over the Full HD (1080p) gaming segment under the $300 price point by beating NVIDIA's entire GeForce GTX 16-series, at least that was the original plan. With the GTX 16-series lacking ray-tracing hardware, the playing field between AMD and NVIDIA is truly leveled. NVIDIA's decision to allow its partners to come up with RTX 2060 cards at $299 from its $349 original price prompted AMD to revise clock speeds with an objective of matching the RTX 2060 at the last moment, which led to BIOS update chaos. Luckily, the PowerColor RX 5600 XT Red Dragon tested in this review was announced after the specs update and comes with the latest BIOS out of the box. There's even prominent branding on the box to reflect that.

Based on the 7 nm "Navi 10" silicon, the Radeon RX 5600 XT is configured with 2,304 stream processors across 36 RDNA compute units, 144 TMUs, 64 ROPs, and a 192-bit wide GDDR6 memory interface, holding 6 GB of memory. On some of the cheapest RX 5600 XT cards, the memory ticks at 12 Gbps, but on the PowerColor Red Dragon, it does 14 Gbps out of the box. What's more interesting is that PowerColor enabled all of the revised-specs without increasing the number of power connectors. The card makes do with a single 8-pin PCIe power input.

The PowerColor RX 5600 XT Red Dragon in this review comes with factory-overclocked speeds of 1560 MHz game and 1620 MHz boost compared to the original 1375/1560 MHz reference specs. Its cooling solution features an elaborate aluminium fin-stack heatsink with a direct-touch heat-pipe base and a pair of large 100 mm fans, which turn off when the GPU is idling. The card is strictly two slots thick, but a good inch taller than what constitutes "full-height." The company is asking $299, or a mere $20 increase over the $279 baseline pricing for the RX 5600 XT Red Dragon. In this review, we take it for a spin across our test bed.

Radeon RX 5600 XT Market Segment Analysis
	Price	Shader Units	ROPs	Core Clock	Boost Clock	Memory Clock	GPU	Transistors	Memory
RX 590	$200	2304	32	1469 MHz	1545 MHz	2000 MHz	Polaris 30	5700M	8 GB, GDDR5, 256-bit
GTX 1660	$200	1408	48	1530 MHz	1785 MHz	2000 MHz	TU116	6600M	6 GB, GDDR5, 192-bit
GTX 1070	$300	1920	64	1506 MHz	1683 MHz	2002 MHz	GP104	7200M	8 GB, GDDR5, 256-bit
RX Vega 56	$260	3584	64	1156 MHz	1471 MHz	800 MHz	Vega 10	12500M	8 GB, HBM2, 2048-bit
GTX 1660 Super	$230	1408	48	1530 MHz	1785 MHz	1750 MHz	TU116	6600M	6 GB, GDDR6, 192-bit
GTX 1660 Ti	$270	1536	48	1500 MHz	1770 MHz	1500 MHz	TU116	6600M	6 GB, GDDR6, 192-bit
GTX 1070 Ti	$450	2432	64	1607 MHz	1683 MHz	2000 MHz	GP104	7200M	8 GB, GDDR5, 256-bit
RX 5600 XT	$280	2304	64	1375 MHz	1560 MHz	1500 MHz	Navi 10	10300M	6 GB, GDDR6, 192-bit
PowerColor RX 5600 XT Red Dragon	$300	2304	64	1560 MHz	1620 MHz	1750 MHz	Navi 10	10300M	6 GB, GDDR6, 192-bit
RTX 2060	$300	1920	48	1365 MHz	1680 MHz	1750 MHz	TU106	10800M	6 GB, GDDR6, 192-bit
RX 5700	$330	2304	64	1465 MHz	1625 MHz	1750 MHz	Navi 10	10300M	8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
GTX 1080	$500	2560	64	1607 MHz	1733 MHz	1251 MHz	GP104	7200M	8 GB, GDDR5X, 256-bit
RTX 2060 Super	$400	2176	64	1470 MHz	1650 MHz	1750 MHz	TU106	10800M	8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RX Vega 64	$375	4096	64	1247 MHz	1546 MHz	953 MHz	Vega 10	12500M	8 GB, HBM2, 2048-bit
GTX 1080 Ti	$700	3584	88	1481 MHz	1582 MHz	1376 MHz	GP102	12000M	11 GB, GDDR5X, 352-bit
RX 5700 XT	$380	2560	64	1605 MHz	1755 MHz	1750 MHz	Navi 10	10300M	8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit

Packaging

The Card

Visually, the PowerColor RX 5600 XT Red Dragon matches the RX 5700 XT Red Dragon exactly. The card looks high quality, especially because of the metal trim around the two fans. On the back, you'll find a high-quality metal backplate.

Dimensions of the card are 24.0 x 13.0 cm.

Installation requires two slots in your system.

Display connectivity options include one HDMI 2.0b and three standard DisplayPort 1.4a ports.

The board uses one 8-pin power connector. This input configuration is specified for up to 225 watts of power draw.

AMD's Navi generation of GPUs no longer supports CrossFire. DirectX 12 does include its own set of multi-GPU capabilities, but implementation requires game developers to put serious development time into a feature only a tiny fraction of their customers might ever use.

PowerColor made good use of that area by positioning their BIOS switch here. The second BIOS runs at reduced fan speed for a quieter experience.

Disassembly

PowerColor is using five heatpipes and a copper base on their cooler. This piece of the cooler also provides cooling for the memory chips and VRM circuitry. This is the exact same cooler as on the RX 5700 XT Red Dragon—even including all eight thermal pads.

The backplate is made out of metal; it adds to the card's aesthetic and protects components on the PCB when handling the card.

High-resolution PCB Pictures

These pictures are for the convenience of volt modders and people who would like to see all the finer details on the PCB. Feel free to link back to us and use these in your articles or forum posts.